One of the most annoying parts of my job is dealing with clients who are constantly begging for feedback after their auditions. “Did they say something?” “Did you hear anything?” “Did they like me?”
And I know what you’re thinking. It’s a reasonable request. Feedback can help actors understand if what they’re doing in the room is working. On the surface that’s absolutely true, but in the harsh reality of my world, life doesn’t always work that way.
Helpful feedback is a myth. Nine out of 10 times, it means nothing and will be contradicted by your next audition. This week, you’re too young to play 30. Next week, you’re too old.
Here are the three most common responses I receive when I ask casting directors for feedback: “We went a different way.” “It wasn’t a good fit.” “We had stronger choices.” Those are superficial answers that don’t really tell me anything and when I ask for more, I rarely get it.
But sometimes, casting directors do present me with helpful feedback and when that happens, I always pass the comments on to my clients. At that point, they have a nervous breakdown because despite their need for feedback, actors rarely have the capacity to understand it.
Memorize the following statement: Feedback equals a suggestion or opinion that needs to be analyzed.
There are many ways to do this. I would suggest you start by considering your intention for the audition. Based on the feedback, did you accomplish what you set out to do or were your choices misunderstood?
To clarify, here’s a piece of specific feedback and two possible ways to analyze it:
1) The casting director says you’re not going further because you came across too angry. If your intention was to convey anger then mission accomplished, but now you have to examine if that decision was the right one. In this case, the feedback isn’t that you did a bad job—it’s that you made the wrong choice. This means you need to rethink how you set your intentions.
2) The casting director says you’re not going further because you came across too angry. That feedback disturbs you because you know for a fact that you were not angry, you were not playing angry, and (in your mind) you didn’t do anything that could come across as angry. This means there’s a big disconnect between your intention and execution. So you must ask yourself: What are you doing to give the wrong impression?
Now let’s look at feedback from my perspective.
If every agent called every casting director after every audition, the whole operation would grind to a halt. There wouldn’t be time for anything else. That’s why I try to pick and choose the right moments to ask for feedback.
If casting calls me to set up a client, I will seize that opportunity to ask how another actor did on a prior audition; that way, it’s not the annoying agent calling casting. It’s them calling me and me slipping in the question.
Naturally, when the stakes are high, I always call for feedback and casting always gives it. I’m talking about clients testing for pilots and other major deals where the actor is far along in the casting process but it ends up not going their way.
Here’s the takeaway. One, useful feedback is rare, but when given you must analyze it carefully. And two, don’t ask your reps for feedback after every single audition.
So what do you think? Did you enjoy this column? Did you learn anything? Do you love me?
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